


Night-Lessons

by Davechicken



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 20:20:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9014341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken
Summary: Baze can't sleep. Neither can Chirrut.





	

Chirrut has always slept less than Baze. It’s not that he suffers with insomnia, it’s just that he’s one of those annoying people who can survive on four hours if he needs to, without suffering the next day. He tends to default to six (with half an hour in the middle of it, awake) if left to his own devices.

Baze had worried about that, to begin with. He’d worried about a lot of things when it came to Chirrut, and chief amongst those was his safety. The slighter man seemed to court danger like some people courted love. Since they’d lost the temple, it seemed like every day the world got darker and more dangerous.

That meant _Baze_ didn’t sleep. And unlike Chirrut, that leaves him cranky and sore.

The small bed they share bends under their combined weight, and Baze doesn’t open his eyes. He can feel the heat of Chirrut’s body pressed against him, a reassurance of his still-beating-heart. He can _hear_ that, if he tries, or he imagines he can. Thud-thudding away, in the night.

Chirrut holds a small holocron in his hands. The light from it is dimmed, and it plays on the inside of Baze’s eyelids. The voices are turned low, and they recite tales and mantras and snippets of faith. Meditations and musings. 

They lost most of their records when they fled the temple at last, routed by an overwhelming force - and not the Force - and broken into this non-life. Chirrut wouldn’t leave Jedha, and Baze could never leave Chirrut. 

So they remain, until Chirrut decides they can leave.

He listens to the words that once had meaning, but no longer do. Not for him. He can’t believe in a Force that would allow such cruelty to dominate, even if Chirrut insists it isn’t the ‘Force’ that let the Empire happen: it’s people. Baze felt his heart break with the temple walls, and that’s why Chirrut listens in ‘private’.

He’s sure his husband knows he’s awake. Chirrut can always tell by his breathing, and he normally listens to the teachings when Baze isn’t conscious to feel the sting of loss. All these things… all these things.

Before the Empire, this would have been their life. Protecting the Whills, as they always had. A line stretching back so far as to vanish into the horizon, and now… well. Now there is no horizon. There is no line. 

It is all broken. It is all destroyed.

There is only a voice from a mouth long dead, and the crystals are shattered by the Empire’s hand, just like his heart. 


End file.
